First or all, price is really a non issue, so I will not



talk about that here. As business owners you understand,

it is not about price, it is about ROI.

Secondly is the part about pretty. Owning a website that

is pretty will never make you any money. You need a lot

more then a pretty site. For starters, when a potential

customer comes to your web site, are they looking to be

entertained, or to buy what you are selling?

There are a lot of web site design firms out there that

focus on pretty. They know that if they can make their

clients say "WOW - That is my web site" they can sell

more sites. They do this with little care in whether

the web site will actually help to move any product.

Rule number 1: Do not buy a site based on WOW factor.

The goal of the website is not to give something for

the webmaster to show off. The goal of the site is to

move product. The site must push the product.

- (The does not mean it can not look nice)

Rule number 2: Check the speed of the development

company's portfolio sites. As a web site owner, it

is important to remember that nearly half of your

potential clients are still on dial up internet.

Most business owners are on high speed so they do not

even realize speed is a problem. Typically a good website

will load in under 10 seconds on dial up. Under 7 seconds

is preferred. Many of the "pretty" sites of the world, or

those with flash animation take 45 seconds to 3 minutes on

dial up internet. Now if half of your users had to wait

over a minute per page to view your site, how many will

stay around to buy anything? You can check the 56K

speed at websiteoptimization.com

Rule number 3: Avoid frame sets at all costs. There

are numerous reasons that frames are bad, but all you

really need to know is that right in Googles webmaster

guidelines, it strongly recommends against using frame

sets on your site. (A frame set is easily recognized

when you can scroll with one part of the page and the

rest remains fixed)

Rule number 4: Watch out for email addresses. All new

webmasters want their email on their website. This is

a bad idea. Email addresses also present a range of

problems including user email client configuration,

spam, and lots leads. All contacts from your site should

go through a form and then properly logged to protect

you from losing anything.

These rules are not all there is to building a good

web site, but if find a company that follows these

rules, they will probably be a good company that knows

how to make a profitable web site.

Article written by Scott Alexander.